^Paul, Matthias (2001-12-30). "KEYBOARD.SYS internal structure". comp.os.msdos.programmer. Archived from the original on 2017-09-09. Retrieved 2016-09-17. […] In fact, the format is basically the same in MS-DOS 3.3 - 8.0, PC DOS 3.3 - 2000, including Russian, Lithuanian, Chinese and Japanese issues, as well as in Windows NT, 2000, and XP […]. There are minor differences and incompatibilities, but the general format has not changed over the years. […] Some of the data entries contain normal tables […]. However, most entries contain "executable code" interpreted by some kind of P-code interpreter at *runtime*, including conditional branches and the like. This is why the KEYB driver has such a huge memory footprint compared to table-driven keyboard drivers which can be done in 3 - 4 Kb getting the same level of functionality except for the interpreter. […]

^Mendelson, Edward (2001-07-20). "How to Display the Euro in MS-DOS and Windows DOS". Display the euro symbol in full-screen MS-DOS (including Windows 95 or Windows 98 full-screen DOS). Archived from the original on 2016-09-17. Retrieved 2016-09-17. […] Matthias Paul […] warns that the IBM PC DOS version of the keyboard driver uses some internal procedures that are not recognized by the Microsoft driver, so, if possible, you should use the IBM versions of both KEYB.COM and KEYBOARD.SYS instead of mixing Microsoft and IBM versions […] (NB. What is meant by "procedures" here are some additional byte codes in the IBM KEYBOARD.SYS file not supported by the Microsoft version of the KEYB driver.)

1.
DOS
–
None of these systems were officially named DOS, and indeed DOS is a general term for disk operating system. MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, and Microsoft Windows, still ran on top of it until about 2001, dozens of other operating systems also use the acronym DOS, including DOS/360 from 1966. Others are Apple DOS, Apple ProDOS, Atari DOS, Commodore DOS, TRSDOS, see List of DOS operating systems § Other operating systems. IBM PC DOS and its predecessor, 86-DOS, resembled Digital Researchs CP/M—the dominant disk operating system for 8-bit Intel 8080, DOS instead ran on Intel 8086 16-bit processors. Starting with MS-DOS1.28 and PC DOS2.0 the operating system incorporated various features inspired by Xenix, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, built with the Intel 8088 microprocessor, they needed an operating system. Seeking an 8088-compatible build of CP/M, IBM initially approached Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, IBM was sent to Digital Research, and a meeting was set up. However, the negotiations for the use of CP/M broke down, Digital Research wished to sell CP/M on a royalty basis, while IBM sought a single license. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall refused, and IBM withdrew, Gates in turn approached Seattle Computer Products. There, programmer Tim Paterson had developed a variant of CP/M-80, the system was initially named QDOS, before being made commercially available as 86-DOS. Microsoft purchased 86-DOS, allegedly for $50,000 and this became Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS, introduced in 1981. Within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies, Microsoft later required the use of the MS-DOS name, with the exception of the IBM variant. IBM continued to develop their version, PC DOS, for the IBM PC, Digital Research became aware that an operating system similar to CP/M was being sold by IBM, and threatened legal action. IBM responded by offering an agreement, they would give PC consumers a choice of PC DOS or CP/M-86, side-by-side, CP/M cost almost $200 more than PC DOS, and sales were low. CP/M faded, with MS-DOS and PC DOS becoming the operating system for PCs. Microsoft originally sold MS-DOS only to original equipment manufacturers, one major reason for this was that not all early PCs were 100% IBM PC compatible. DOS was structured such that there was a separation between the specific device driver code and the DOS kernel. Microsoft provided an OEM Adaptation Kit which allowed OEMs to customize the device driver code to their particular system, by the early 1990s, most PCs adhered to IBM PC standards so Microsoft began selling MS-DOS in retail with MS-DOS5.0. In the mid-1980s Microsoft developed a version of DOS

2.
Windows
–
Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system

3.
Operating system
–
An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing

4.
Device driver
–
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver communicates with the device through the bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device, once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific and they usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface. The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction by acting as a translator between a device and the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers can write the higher-level application code independently of specific hardware the end-user is using. For example, an application for interacting with a serial port may simply have two functions for send data and receive data. At a lower level, a device driver implementing these functions would communicate to the serial port controller installed on a users computer. Writing a device driver requires an understanding of how the hardware. In contrast, most user-level software on modern operating systems can be stopped without greatly affecting the rest of the system, even drivers executing in user mode can crash a system if the device is erroneously programmed. These factors make it difficult and dangerous to diagnose problems. The task of writing drivers thus usually falls to software engineers or computer engineers who work for hardware-development companies and this is because they have better information than most outsiders about the design of their hardware. Moreover, it was considered in the hardware manufacturers interest to guarantee that their clients can use their hardware in an optimum way. Typically, the Logical Device Driver is written by the operating system vendor, but in recent years non-vendors have written numerous device drivers, mainly for use with free and open source operating systems. In such cases, it is important that the manufacturer provides information on how the device communicates. Although this information can instead be learned by reverse engineering, this is more difficult with hardware than it is with software. Microsoft has attempted to reduce system instability due to poorly written device drivers by creating a new framework for driver development, if such drivers malfunction, they do not cause system instability. Apple has a framework for developing drivers on Mac OS X called the I/O Kit

5.
MS-DOS
–
MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0 for use in their PCs. During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform and it was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a operating system, and consumes negligible installation space. MS-DOS was a form of 86-DOS – owned by Seattle Computer Products. This first version was shipped in August 1980, Microsoft, which needed an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer hired Tim Paterson in May 1981 and bought 86-DOS1.10 for $75,000 in July of the same year. Microsoft kept the number, but renamed it MS-DOS. They also licensed MS-DOS1. 10/1.14 to IBM, within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies. It was designed to be an OS that could run on any 8086-family computer, thus, there were many different versions of MS-DOS for different hardware, and there is a major distinction between an IBM-compatible machine and an MS-DOS machine. This design would have worked well for compatibility, if application programs had only used MS-DOS services to perform device I/O, Microsoft omitted multi-user support from MS-DOS because Microsofts Unix-based operating system, Xenix, was fully multi-user. After the breakup of the Bell System, however, AT&T Computer Systems started selling UNIX System V, believing that it could not compete with AT&T in the Unix market, Microsoft abandoned Xenix, and in 1987 transferred ownership of Xenix to the Santa Cruz Operation. On 25 March 2014, Microsoft made the code to SCP MS-DOS1.25, as an April Fools joke in 2015, Microsoft Mobile launched a Windows Phone application called MS-DOS Mobile which was presented as a new mobile operating system and worked similar to MS-DOS. Version 3.1 – Support for Microsoft Networks Version 3.2 – First version to support 3.5 inch,720 kB floppy drives and diskettes. Version 3.21 Version 3.22 – Version 3.25 Version 3.3 – First version to support 3.5 inch,1.44 MB floppy drives and diskettes, Version 3. 3a Version 3.31 – supports FAT16B and larger drives. MS-DOS4.0 and MS-DOS4.1 – A separate branch of development with additional multitasking features and it is unrelated to any later versions, including versions 4.00 and 4.01 listed below MS-DOS4. x – includes a graphical/mouse interface. It had many bugs and compatibility issues. Version 4.00 – First version to support a hard disk partition that is greater than 32 MiB. Version 4.01 – Microsoft rewritten Version 4.00 released under MS-DOS label, First version to introduce volume serial number when formatting hard disks and floppy disks

6.
Windows 9x
–
This includes all versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98. Windows 9x is predominantly known for its use in desktops, in 1998, Windows made up 82% of operating system market share. Internal release versions for versions of Windows 9x are 4. x, previous MS-DOS based versions of Windows used version numbers of 3.2 or lower. Windows NT, which was aimed at professional users such as networks and businesses, used a similar, the final version of Windows 9x was Windows ME, released in September 2000 with an internal version number of 4.9. All future versions of Windows, starting with Windows XP, would be based on the Windows NT codebase, the first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on 20 November 1985, achieved little popularity. It was originally going to be called Interface Manager but Rowland Hanson, Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an operating environment that extended MS-DOS, and shared the latters inherent flaws and problems. The second release of Microsoft Windows, version 2.0, came out on 9 December 1987, and used the memory model. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasking system like DESQview, Microsoft Windows scored a significant success with Windows 3.0, released in 1990. Microsoft developed Windows 3.1, which included minor improvements to Windows 3.0. It also excluded support for Real mode, and only ran on an 80286 or better processor. Later Microsoft also released Windows 3.11, a touch-up to Windows 3.1 which included all of the patches and updates that followed the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992, meanwhile, Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the architects of VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation. Microsoft hired him in August 1988 to create a successor to OS/2, Microsoft announced at the conference its intentions to develop a successor to both Windows NT and Windows 3. 1s replacement, which would unify the two into one operating system. In hindsight, Cairo was a more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT. After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer oriented version of the operating system code-named Chicago, Chicago was designed to have support for 32-bit preemptive multitasking like OS/2 and Windows NT, although a 16-bit kernel would remain for the sake of backward compatibility. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard 32-bit programming interface, a new GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release slipped. Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit, parts of it remained 16-bit for reasons of compatibility, performance and these factors immediately began to impact the operating systems efficiency and stability. Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the name for Chicago when it was released on August 24,1995

7.
Text file
–
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a file system. The end of a file is often denoted by placing one or more special characters. Such markers were required under the CP/M and MS-DOS operating systems, on modern operating systems such as Windows and Unix-like systems, text files do not contain any special EOF character. Text file refers to a type of container, while plain text refers to a type of content, Text files can contain plain text, but they are not limited to such. At a generic level of description, there are two kinds of files, text files and binary files. Because of their simplicity, text files are used for storage of information. They avoid some of the problems encountered with other formats, such as endianness, padding bytes. Further, when data corruption occurs in a file, it is often easier to recover. A disadvantage of text files is that usually have a low entropy. A simple text file needs no additional metadata to assist the reader in interpretation, and therefore may contain no data at all, the ASCII character set is the most common format for English-language text files, and is generally assumed to be the default file format in many situations. For accented and other characters, it is necessary to choose a character encoding. In many systems, this is chosen on the basis of the locale setting on the computer it is read on. Common character encodings include ISO 8859-1 for many European languages, because many encodings have only a limited repertoire of characters, they are often only usable to represent text in a limited subset of human languages. Unicode is an attempt to create a standard for representing all known languages. On most operating systems the name text file refers to file format that only plain text content with very little formatting. Such files can be viewed and edited on text terminals or in text editors. Text files usually have the MIME type text/plain, usually with additional information indicating an encoding, MS-DOS and Windows use a common text file format, with each line of text separated by a two-character combination, carriage return and line feed

8.
Windows Vista
–
Windows Vista is an operating system by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs. Development was completed on 8 November 2006, and over the three months, it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers. On 30 January 2007, it was released worldwide and was available for purchase. It was succeeded by Windows 7, which was released to manufacturing on 22 July 2009, Vista aimed to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to simplify sharing files and media between computers and devices. Windows Vista included version 3.0 of the. NET Framework, Microsofts primary stated objective with Windows Vista was to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system. One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors was their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses, Microsoft stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion. While these new features and security improvements have garnered positive reviews, Vista has also been the target of much criticism, as a result of these and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP. In May 2010, Windows Vistas market share had a range from 15% to 26%. On 22 October 2010, Microsoft ceased sales of copies of Windows Vista. As of March 2017, Vistas market share was 0. 72%, Microsoft stopped providing mainstream support for Windows Vista on 10 April 2012. Extended support will end on 11 April 2017, Microsoft began work on Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename Longhorn, in May 2001, five months before the release of Windows XP. It was originally expected to ship sometime late in 2003 as a step between Windows XP and Blackcomb, which was planned to be the companys next major operating system release. Gradually, Longhorn assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for Blackcomb, in some builds of Longhorn, their license agreement said For the Microsoft product codenamed Whistler. Many of Microsofts developers were also re-tasked to build updates to Windows XP, faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on 27 August 2004, that it had revised its plans. Longhorn became known as Vista in 2005, the early development stages of Longhorn were generally characterized by incremental improvements and updates to Windows XP. After several months of relatively little news or activity from Microsoft with Longhorn, Microsoft released Build 4008 and it was also privately handed out to a select group of software developers. An optional new taskbar was introduced that was thinner than the previous build, the most notable visual and functional difference, however, came with Windows Explorer. The incorporation of the Plex theme made blue the dominant color of the entire application, the Windows XP-style task pane was almost completely replaced with a large horizontal pane that appeared under the toolbars

9.
Microsoft
–
Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office

10.
IBM PC DOS
–
IBM PC DOS is a discontinued operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1981 into the 2000s. Before version 6.1, PC DOS was an IBM-branded version of MS-DOS, from version 6.1 on, PC DOS became IBMs independent product. The IBM task force assembled to develop the PC decided that critical components of the machine, including the operating system and this radical break from company tradition of in-house development was one of the key decisions that made the IBM PC an industry standard. At that time private company Microsoft, founded five years before by Bill Gates, was selected for the operating system. IBM wanted Microsoft to retain ownership of whatever software it developed, according to task force member Jack Sams, The reasons were internal. We had a problem being sued by people claiming we had stolen their stuff. It could be expensive for us to have our programmers look at code that belonged to someone else because they would then come back and say we stole it. We had lost a series of suits on this, and so we didnt want to have a product which was clearly someone elses product worked on by IBM people and we went to Microsoft on the proposition that we wanted this to be their product. IBM first contacted Microsoft to look the company over in July 1980, negotiations continued over the next months, and the paperwork was officially signed in early November. Although IBM expected that most customers would use PC DOS, The IBM PC also supported CP/M-86, which became available six months after PC DOS, and UCSD p-System operating systems. IBMs expectation proved correct, one found that 96. 3% of PCs were ordered with the $40 PC-DOS compared to 3. 4% for the $240 CP/M-86. Microsoft first licensed, then purchased 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, ORear got 86-DOS to run on the prototype PC in February 1981. 86-DOS had to be converted from 8-inch to 5. 25-inch floppy disks and integrated with the BIOS, IBM had more people writing requirements for the computer than Microsoft had writing code. ORear often felt overwhelmed by the number of people he had to deal with at the ESD facility in Boca Raton, 86-DOS was rebranded IBM PC DOS1.0 for its August 1981 release with the IBM PC. The initial version of DOS was largely based on CP/M-801. x and most of its architecture, function calls, the most significant difference was the fact that it introduced a different file system, FAT12. Unlike all later DOS versions, the DATE and TIME commands were separate rather than part of COMMAND. COM. Single-sided 160 kilobyte 5.25 floppies were the only disk format supported, in late 1981 Paterson, now at Microsoft, began writing PC DOS1.10. It debuted in May 1982 along with the Revision B IBM PC, support for the new double-sided drives was added, allowing 320 kB per disk

11.
IBM
–
International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360

12.
Microsoft Windows
–
Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system

DOS
–
None of these systems were officially named DOS, and indeed DOS is a general term for disk operating system. MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, and Microsoft Windows, still ran on top of it until about 2001, dozens of other operating systems also use the acronym DOS, including DOS/360 from 1966. Others are Apple DO

1.
FreeDOS screenshot showing the command line interface, directory structure and version information.

Windows
–
Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedde

1.
Screenshot of Windows 10, showing the Action Center and Start Menu

Operating system
–
An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is

1.
OS/360 was used on most IBM mainframe computers beginning in 1966, including computers used by the Apollo program.

3.
The first server for the World Wide Web ran on NeXTSTEP, based on BSD

Device driver
–
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver communicates with the device through the bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device,

MS-DOS
–
MS-DOS is a discontinued operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for a system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS1.0

1.
The original MS-DOS advertisement in 1981.

2.
As of 2011 [update], MS-DOS is still used in some enterprises to run legacy applications, such as this US Navy food service management system.

Windows 9x
–
This includes all versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98. Windows 9x is predominantly known for its use in desktops, in 1998, Windows made up 82% of operating system market share. Internal release versions for versions of Windows 9x are 4. x, previous MS-DOS based versions of Windows used version numbers of 3.2 or lower. Windows NT, which was aimed

1.
Screenshot of Windows 95, the first version of Windows in the 9x series

Text file
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A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a file system. The end of a file is often denoted by placing one or more special characters. Such markers were required under the CP/M and MS-DOS operating systems, on modern operating systems such as Windows and Unix-like

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A common type of icon used to represent text files in a file explorer.

Windows Vista
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Windows Vista is an operating system by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs. Development was completed on 8 November 2006, and over the three months, it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers. On 30 January 2007, i

Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the wor

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Front lobby entrance of building 17, one of the largest buildings on Microsoft's main campus in Redmond

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Paul Allen (l.) and Bill Gates (r.) on October 19, 1981, in a sea of PCs after signing a pivotal contract. IBM called Microsoft in July 1980 inquiring about programming languages for its upcoming PC line; after failed negotiations with another company, IBM gave Microsoft a contract to develop the OS for the new line of PCs.

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Bill Gates giving his deposition in 1998 for the United States v. Microsoft trial.

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In 1996, Microsoft released Windows CE, a version of the operating system meant for personal digital assistants and other tiny computers.

IBM PC DOS
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IBM PC DOS is a discontinued operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, manufactured and sold by IBM from the 1981 into the 2000s. Before version 6.1, PC DOS was an IBM-branded version of MS-DOS, from version 6.1 on, PC DOS became IBMs independent product. The IBM task force assembled to develop the PC decided that critical components of the m

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User manual and diskette for IBM PC DOS 1.1

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PC DOS (IBM DOS)

IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets comput

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IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by U.S. President Barack Obama on September 18, 2009

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IBM showing their various innovations at CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany

Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedde